Postcards from Italy
by Chibi Lurrel
Summary: 1x3, hints of 3x4. Italy is large, and Trowa thinks it's lucky that the Noventa family hasn't emigrated yet. Heero just wants to live without guilt. Set between episodes 13, Cathrine's Tears, and 14, The Order to Blow Up 01.


**Postcards from Italy  
- Chibi Lurrel**

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Heero tracks down the entire Noventa line with a grim determination. He finds them all, proceeds to hand them his fate. He is like a man with a deathwish. He_ is _a man with a deathwish. Trowa has always been crap with metaphors and tries hard to think of something Heero could be but isn't. Heero Yuy is the quarterback, Trowa decides. He is the star player. Trowa feels he would be lucky to even play second string. The guy killed himself like it was a direct order. Dr. J had never said to Lady Une 'I surrender, the stipulation is everyone blows up,' but there you go. Heero's emotions must have led him to a lot of creative mission interpretations, Trowa thinks.

Trowa is surprised to learn his name. They don't use them when they are together, and Heero had never offered his. Trowa had thought it was out of some sort of obligation to the mission, but when he heard Heero tell Sylvia Noventa who he was, he knew it was because it meant nothing. Heero was the first person who had a name like Trowa's -- borrowed. He didn't know the names of the other pilots, and on days they drove through the dusty streets of Italy he liked to imagine what they were. Pilot 02 seemed like someone with a loving family, maybe, some deep history attached to simple, common syllables. 04 was a gentle boy, and Trowa had loved him instantly. 05 was a complete mystery; Trowa did not even know his fighting styles, had barely seen his Gundam.

They talk about the other pilots a few times.

'What do you think the other pilots are like?' Trowa asks as he drives them through another pastoral landscape. Earth is so alien to him.

Heero shrugs. 'Pilot 02 talks too much.'

'You've spent time with 02?' Trowa is a little surprised.

'Some. He is adept at stealth missions and is, clearly, an above average pilot.'

'Ah.'

'I know you spent some time with 04?'

'Yes. We met in battle. Fighting doesn't suit him.'

Heero shrugs again.

'If I hadn't seen him in a Gundam,' Trowa offers, 'I never would have imagined him in a war.'

Heero doesn't reply to that either.

Their conversations never last much longer than this. Trowa wants to know if maybe Heero had fallen in love with Pilot 02, just a tiny bit, like he had with 04. They had shared a bed, a hotel room, some music. Something. But, Heero isn't cold, either. He makes jokes, if dry ones, he smiles. He just falls right into the silent rhythm Trowa hadn't noticed he'd started.

The first time they fuck is before Trowa even knows his name is Heero. Trowa didn't know anything except that Pilot 01 carried the heavy weight of guilt inside his ribcage, and that he was willing to die at any moment. By their third or fourth relative of Marshall Noventa, Trowa calls him Heero in bed and enjoys the grunt he always receives in response. Having sex with Heero is decidedly different than Trowa first anticipated. Heero is not gentle or rough; he fucks with the drive that he uses to complete every aspect of his life. He never loses control of himself, but he always smiles, always comes with a contented noise in his throat. Neither of them is loud.

'Do you really believe, in your heart, that this is the best course of action?' Trowa asks him after bearing witness to yet another confession. He expected Heero to lose steam after five, but each time he confesses to the accidental murder of one of the galaxy's strongest pacifist holds the same intensity.

'I have to know this, Trowa. That my life isn't some sort of horrible accident. If these people think I should live, than my life still has meaning.'

'For what, though? We were all put here to fight.'

Trowa shrugs and Heero says nothing. He doesn't know how to tell Heero that he is an inspiration, that Trowa wants to see him fight again. Instead, they drive through roads and cities with old buildings. Heero drinks coffee in the mornings, black, unsweetened. Trowa drinks tea and thinks of space. He doesn't know how people can live on the ground. There are so many trees, so much grass, so many people everywhere. The L3 colonies were sparsely populated, slow. Italy is fast, and though he can speak basic Italian better than Heero, he is still disarmed by the ease that Heero has in speaking with people. Trowa feels like his tongue turns to metal when he tries something as simple as buying bread. Heero never teases him.

'What sort of life is this, Heero? We're in the middle of a damn war,' Trowa asks him on their way to the penultimate relative. The climate gets rainier as they continue their trip across the countryside; Trowa feels lucky that the Noventa family hasn't emigrated out of Italy.

'A better one than those OZ bastards have, for sure.' Heero smiles as he says it.

When they first learn of the possibility of returning to space, it is a quiet whisper through the comm links. Heero stops approaching him, spending his time recalibrating his Gundam, stretching his wounded arm, reimmersing himself in the idea of battle. Trowa watches him cautiously, hoping for something that he cannot put a metaphor too. Language like that is so alien to him now.

But when Trowa crosses the last name off a piece of paper, he knows the affair is over.

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**Author's Note: **The title of this piece is from a Beirut song off Gulag Orkestar, but the one that is best suited to this piece is 'The Canals of Our City' or 'The Bunker.' Basically listening to Beirut makes this story better, is what I'm sayin' here. Let me know if you agree, if you hate this, if you are as surprised as I am that I wrote a 1x3/3x1.


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